


Regret

by sweepeaspatch



Category: Death in Paradise
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28596132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweepeaspatch/pseuds/sweepeaspatch
Summary: That Season 10 promo clip - one interpretation - and not a nice one.
Relationships: Camille Bordey/Richard Poole
Comments: 25
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **This is based on the Season 10 promo video that burst upon us like a bombshell a few weeks ago. It’s not very nice but it needed out (cheap therapy) so here it is. I am NOT looking forward to the actual episode unless there is a reefing big surprise waiting! Which I doubt.**

**Regret**  
Part 1 of 2  
Special agent Bordey stands in the hot Caribbean sun on the beach of dreams and watches the two young lovers with a small smirk of a smile. She’s been shadowing them for several days now, overseeing the investigation and making the odd suggestion when she felt they needed her expertise but they are a very good partnership and had carried on as if they didn’t even hear her. Which is fine. Really, it is. She enjoys seeing a working couple so finely tuned to one another.

Just before DI Parker stoops to pick up his backpack, he stares down the beach and murmurs, “It’s time to go.” He stoops, shoulders the pack, and turns smartly to march off.

Camille’s smile widens into a full-blown smirk. _A backpack! Of all things for a DI to carry around! Why bother with a backpack when everyone knows that a good sturdy leather briefcase is just the thing? Why, every DI I’ve ever worked with…_ Her brows come down suddenly, the smirk falling off her face. Something about a briefcase…

As DI Parker moves off, DS Cassel smiles tenderly but Parker doesn’t see it. He’s very manfully striding away, a most carefully composed stern look on his face. Cassel shakes her head and follows. 

Camille knows exactly what the young woman is thinking. _Men! Why must they pretend to be so cool and in control at all times? We know… women know… that they are not. The harder they try to hide their emotions, the closer to the surface those emotions are. Would it kill them to give us a little smile, a brief wink, perhaps even a quick touch of the hand? Yes, for some of them, it would! In fact…_

Camille’s musings rattle to a halt, her frown returning with a vengeance. Her steps slow as the young couple reach the house’s corner and disappear. She should be following them but instead her steps slow and she thinks… _In fact, I knew someone who could never reveal his true feelings, didn’t I? Yes, I did. And he lived right here, didn’t he?_ She looks up at the house as if seeing it for the first time.

And, just like that, the memories flood in and swamp her. 

Her heart clenches in her chest and the pain is enormous. _Richard! His name was Richard. He loved me and I loved him yet nothing was ever said, nothing was ever done. I never even kissed him, not properly, not like I wanted to, not like he deserved. Instead, we carried on carrying on, my upper lip became as stiff as his. What had I been waiting for? A miracle? A sign from above? For his frightened bruised heart to heal enough to take a chance?_

She stares up at his little house and grieves afresh. _And now he’s gone. Gone, gone, gone. Never to return. And I am left behind to haunt this world as an empty shell and torture myself with the memories of what could have been and will now never be._ Movement on the railing catches her eye and she smiles small. _Harry, of course it’s Harry, good and faithful little reptile companion, he must miss him too… but what is he looking at?_

Harry is staring off to the west, eyes fixed, head up. Staring like a basilisk. 

Camille turns then, looks to the west and sees something dark moving on the sands but her tears blur it into a wavery shimmery image. She blinks and the image smashes into crystal clarity. Her heart seizes up once more but not in sorrow. 

It’s Richard, walking, coming home, just a dark little suited blot on the panoramic glaring vista of the simmering gold sands in the merciless anvil-strike of the Sainte-Marie sun.

She knows it can’t be him. She knows in her heart, in her soul, in her tears, but just as she feels like she’s haunting this place, she also knows that he will always haunt her. _He looks so tired, so dispirited, so hot and uncomfortable. And there in his hand is the briefcase… and is he?…_ she peers closer then snorts… _Yes, he’s wearing my favourite tie, the one with the blue stripes that brought out the vivid green of his fascinating eyes._ Her memory races back through the years. Yes, her favourite, definitely. 

Just as she thinks she’d better get out of the sun and into some shade so this painful image can fade out of her obviously over-heated brain, the Richard-mirage lifts a glorious pale hand and gives her a shy hesitant wave. Her eyes narrow and she snorts again. _OK, that’s it! I need to sit down then I need to LIE down! I can’t be having phantom DI’s waving at me! He’s gone and I’m still here and I need to carry on just like he taught me._ She steels herself, wrenches her stinging eyes off him, wheels about, and marches stiffly to the nearest copse of trees.

As she passes the house, Harry skitters and flips off the railing and onto her shoulder. The move surprises her for, just as HE had never touched her, Harry has also never touched her. Nevertheless she glances down at little golden eyes as he stares over her shoulder to the beach. “Forget it, Harry,” she whispers, “he’s not really there. We’re both dreaming. Let’s sit in the shade with Boaty for a few minutes then you can go back home and I can go back to town. It’s been a long day and I’m really tired.” 

She glances up the lane then, sees the Jeep is gone, and mutters, “Hey, why didn’t they wait?”

She sits, feels Boaty’s solid reality, drops a hand to rub the paintwork and remembers the day they’d surprised him with it, the beer she’d shared with him out on the waters back when they were just learning about each other, back when every day held the promise of a new beginning, back to the days when he was still here. _If only I’d said something or done something, I might have changed the future, might have changed his fate… and mine… Richard… oh, Richard! I loved you with all my heart… and I still do! Nothing can help me. Nothing can save me. Only you… only you…_ and the dam finally bursts. 

She drops her head into her hands and keens in sobbing misery.  
END – part 1


	2. Regret - part 2 of 2

Part 2 of 2  
Richard Poole struggles through the burning sands, relishing the hammer-stroke of solar punishment. It is part of his penance. His shoes are full of sand, his collar feels too tight, and the briefcase handle is damp in his hand. Yet he perseveres because he wills it. There is no alternative. He feels a tear run down his cheek to join the sweat that masks it. _Why do tears burn?_ he mourns. _Why do I still cry?_ But he knows. He can’t fool himself, not here, not now, not on this most dreadful of anniversaries.

He is here and she is not. She is gone, gone, gone, and he will never see her again. All his plans to visit Paris to surprise her, to invite her back to Sainte-Marie for a reunion, all his silly stilted stalled plans to weasel his way back into her life had failed. Because HE had failed. He had failed to act. He had failed to speak. He had failed to tell her the truth. And he had failed to keep her here on the island at his side where she belonged. She’d gone off to Paris and…

He swallows the choking swell in his throat and marches on, closer and closer to his former domicile where all things had seemed possible but where everything had turned to ashes. She had left him and he had let her go. He loved her too much to stand in her way. _No,_ he thinks furiously; _tell the truth, Richard, today of ALL days, you were too much of a COWARD to stand in her way. How could I think she would be happy with me? What could I possibly offer her that would make her stay? No, she HAD to go. She deserved happiness and she was never going to find it here… not with me… not with me and my flinching aching coward’s heart._

He lets out a scalding breath, his mind flicking over the day of the phone call. He’d been sitting in his favourite seat at La Kaz, drinking his umpteenth pot of tea, when Catherine’s cry had flashed his blood to ice and his heart to stone. He knew that cry. He’d heard it many times, the anguished cry of the surviving family member. He’d rushed into Catherine’s tiny office as she dropped the phone and swept her up in a completely un-Poole bear-hug that did nothing to comfort either of them as her tears soaked his shoulder and his own unshed tears had choked him into silence. 

The silence of the rest of his life.

Well, not complete silence. Not for the actual rest of his life. 

No, for he had stood stoically at Catherine’s side through everything like a graven guardian as she suffered the days and nights of laying her beloved daughter to rest. He and Dwayne and Fidel had paid for the small mausoleum that marked her final resting place overlooking Honoré. Catherine wants to be interred there too now, France no longer being ‘home’. 

Rather like England is no longer ‘home’ for him.

And, at the final memorial, just when he thought his heart would give one final sigh and finally let him rest, a slim cool hand had touched his and salvation had been offered. He just hadn’t known it at the time. He smiles small. No, she’d been solemn and quiet and the epitome of good manners, murmuring soft words of comfort and understanding and, yes, somehow she had understood, and by understanding she had also made possible the impossible thought of forgiveness.

He pauses briefly in his slog, glances up at his old home, and sees the current DI has vacated as promised so that this annual pilgrimage may be made in private once more. He also sees the pair watching him from the veranda, the pair that should NOT be here but they are here anyway. He snorts softly, _Of course they’re here, they are always here when I need them,_ and lifts a tired hand. She lifts a hand in reply and Harry just keeps staring. He sighs and starts walking again. _God bless her… and Harry… for saving me… for putting up with me through all the dark dim days of my grief until the day dawned when my heart had started beating again… and she was there to greet me like a man raised from the dead._

He arrives at the veranda steps and looks up into worried blue eyes and comes to a decision. “This will be the last time I come here,” he tells her, “It’s been 5 years and I have to stop marking the anniversary of her death. It isn’t fair to you and it doesn’t do anyone any good, not even Harry. All it does is prolong the pain. I have to let her go and get on with my life.” He reaches up, takes her hand and murmurs, “… with OUR life…” His hand slips out of hers and caresses the baby-bump just starting to show, “… with ALL of our lives.”

She nods silently and Harry’s satellite ears swivel forward as if he is in total agreement. Richard smiles anew and ruffles the big dog’s brow, “There’s my boy, there’s my good boy.” Then he glances up to the railing where three tiny green lizards (the other Harry’s resident offspring) stare off to the east. “And what are THEY looking at?” He looks. It’s just Boaty slowly slumping into dissolution in the shade.

He cocks his head. What’s that sound? It sounds like someone crying, hopeless and helpless, someone who needs saving, someone who needs a hero. He listens some more then shakes his head. It’s just the wind, the ever-present off-shore breezes that are never still and that he no longer hears half the time.

“Come on,” he says, helping her down the steps, “let’s go home where we belong, to the hills. I’m done with this beach, with this place. I will come a-haunting no more.”

She offers a slightly teary smile and comes down to him, folds herself to his side and murmurs low, “My sad sweet man, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry and happy at the same time. Yes, please, take me home where I belong, home with you.” She kisses him and he kisses her and his shoulder is once again damp with tears as he leads her away from his past... a past that he must now slam the door on for good. For his good, for her good, and for the good of the little one soon to be ushered into this unkind world.

Harry clatters happily down to follow them but his head turns as he passes the flimsy wreak of a boat. His tail wags once, a doggy sign of sadness and commiseration, then his head comes back up and he follows his alphas up the lane to where she parked their car, right behind the trees where another woman had parked her little motor-bike so long ago.

So… so… so long ago.

Within moments the beach and little house are deserted.

And the wind soughs through the trees like the cries of a soul forever searching, forever alone, and lost lost lost until the end of all time.

END


End file.
